Arikos

  • Name: Arikos of Nile (Formerly Arikos Tiamuli)
  • Aliases: Ari of the Light, Purifier, Holy Crafter
  • Residence: Kuroviva Island, Exier Moon, Planet Nurovidia
  • Species: Human Celeste with tiger traits
  • Family:
    • Parentage struck from record after being removed from his clan.
    • Number of children unknown, but believed to be in the dozens.
  • Age Arrested: 110
  • Current Age: 117
  • Crimes:
    • Cult Organization (Leader)
    • Money Laundering
    • Embezzlement
    • Kidnapping (5 counts)
    • Forced Imprisonment (20+ counts)
    • Enslavement (50+ counts)
    • Brainwashing (100+ counts)
    • Forced Mutilation (100+ counts)
    • First Degree Murder (Cult Suicide – 138 known, 200+ estimated)

Arikos, once a member of the Celigan embassy on planet Nurovidia, was found several years ago with 31 children and 57 women (most of whom were Talmi, and all of which were in some stage of pregnancy, from three weeks to nearly term), and the remnants of a large settlement on a small, otherwise deserted island. The authorities, summoned there by a small contingent of teenagers who escaped the settlement after claiming ‘mass sacrifices’ were about to take place, soon discovered the bodies of several dozen men, older (presumably menopausal) women, and small babies buried in mass graves some distance from the main settlement. While some corpses only had a few fragments each, 138 of the bodies were still fresh, and recently killed.

After everyone who could be accounted for was evactuated from the island, several of the women began to speak out once they felt Arikos’s presence was sufficiently ‘removed’ from them. Damning stories soon came out, sweeping the Nurovidian media with tale after tale of Arikos’s promises to “turn them back” into their “original” human bodies, and how they could earn this by providing him with ‘the means’ to do so, by bearing him children with his abilities to help in the process. From these tales, authorities were quickly able to piece together what had happened to the bodies they discovered; while several of the (non-Celeste) children were killed throughout the process, many of the non-producing members of the cult who had been ‘working’ for Arikos had died some time around or shortly after the teenagers’ escape; while Arikos swears they acted on their own, the suriviving women say that they were ordered to head in the direction of the grave site to ‘assist’ Arikos with the transformations.

In spite of the growing evidence against Arikos, he remained calm, cool, and surprisingly nonplussed, insisting that he had done nothing wrong. At his trial, however, he became increasingly agitated and belligerent, insisting that the police were “Dead Inside” who were actively trying to frame him, and that the escaped teenagers (some of his earliest children through the cult) had been turned against him by them. This change of heart about the teenagers was more likely the result of a brawl that occured soon after Arikos was taken into custody, where the eldest (Murikan) scarred the right side of Arikos’s face, giving the Celeste hyphema in his right eye with the intention of preventing their father from utilizing whatever powers he may have gained from the cult.

The Nurovidian court quickly found him guilty and sentenced him to death, but his sentence was immediately stayed afterwards by the Celigan government, who intervened and insisted that Arikos still maintained some diplomatic immunity since he never resigned from his embassy position. The Tiamuli clan tried to help accelerate his sentence by disowning him, but the Celigan Government did not extend this to his citizenship, leaving his sentence in limbo for several years.

Legal trouble between the two planets ensued until Last Resort was announced, allowing the governments to strike a deal; Arikos would participate in the program, in exchange for two Nurovidian humans (who had been held by Celigo as Dead Inside in unrelated cases) to participate as well.